Ulster Mourns 9 Dead Officers, Catholics Cheer

March 1, 1985|United Press International.

BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND — Police vowed today to hunt down IRA guerrillas who killed nine officers in a mortar attack but gloating Roman Catholics honked horns in jubilation, while a Protestant minister called for the return of the death penalty.

``I have lost God knows how many friends and colleagues tonight. It is sheer slaughter,`` said one distraught policewoman after Thursday`s attack in Newry, 35 miles south of Belfast.

Britain`s minister for Northern Ireland, Douglas Hurd, flew to the province from London to view the devastation and chair an emergency meeting with army, police and security officials. Ulster`s chief constable, Sir John Hermon, cut short a trip to the United States.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who survived a bomb assassination attempt by the outlawed Irish Republican Army last October, sent a message to the relatives of the victims of this ``barbarous deed.``

She called the bombing ``yet another chilling reminder of the sacrifices`` made by the Ulster police in their ``fight against terrorism.``

The IRA fired nine home-made mortars -- each containing 40 to 50 pounds of explosives -- from a hijacked flatbed truck on the police station in Newry, a predominantly Catholic town on the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, as about 30 officers of the predominantly Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary sat down to dinner in the canteen.

Nine officers, including two women, were killed in the attack and 32 people were injured, one seriously.

As ambulances ferried the injured to the hospital, a group of Catholic teen-agers cheered the attack. ``I hope they got 15 of you, you bastards,`` one shouted.

Several Roman Catholics drove past the scene this morning honking their car horns in jubilation, witnesses said. One woman, when told how many officers had died, replied, ``Oh, there are still some left then?``

The first politician to arrive at the scene today was the militant Protestant Rev. Ian Paisley, who called for the return of hanging, which has been banned in Britain for two decades.